[Invited contribution to a jubilee volume in honor of
Professor D. Kostic, Founder of the Institute for Experimental Phonetics, Yugoslavia,
August 1978.]

I.Historical
Background

There is
no need to review here the history of “psycholinguistics" but only to
point out, that it is only in this decade, that psycholinguists have begun the
study of natural talk. We were trained as graduate students in the North
American in­tellectual climate of a pragmatized structuralism and
functionalism. BYG was indoctrinated in the descriptive and applied linguistics
of Bloomfield and Fries, and LAJ was trained in the psychology of
neurophysiological behaviorism (Lam­bert, Hebb, Osgood). The psycholinguistics
of the 1950’s was preoccupied with conditioning and semiotics: the acquisition
of sign-function and its semantic fea­tures. The word was the methodological
unit of inquiry as shown by the topics of the investigations of that period:
the effects of word-frequency; similarity and synonymy word-association
clustering effects; verbal learning of pained associates; tachisto-copic
perception of words and their emotionality value; Atlases of semantic differentiation;
stimulus generalization; phonetic articulation; semantic satiation; and many
others where the word was the unit for investigating the psycholinguistic laws
of language behavior (see James & Miron, 1967, for representative
articles).

However,
two separate developments in the 1960’s helped clarify the idea that the laws
of language behavior are to be round beyond the unit of the word. One
development was the spread of the Ethnomethodology School, and the second, the
importation of ideas from the British School. Both introduced a new paradigm,
which allowed a methodology or natural talk.

In our own
history, we encountered the ethnomethodological school through the work of
Goffman, Garfinkel, and Sacks (see References). From their writings we acquired
conceptual tools for studying language behavior as a sociopsycho­logical
phenomenon; that is, that language behavior in natural situations was a
spontaneous, reactive phenomenon. Discourse production was to be seen as a
natural biological phenomenon, hence, responsive to environmental effects.
Socio­logists Goffman, Garfinkel, and Sacks took social organization on the
daily round as the basis for defining the functional units of language
behavior. As sociologists, they viewed the analysis of natural talk as a task
in uncovering the effective social stimuli that made possible the successful
accomplishment of ordinary transactional routines. Discourse production thus
became a medium for transactional exchanges. The unit of analysis thus becomes
the transaction; not the word, hut an ‘exchange of words’!!

The second
development that shifted our theoretical position from the word to the
exchange, was the work of the British Ordinary Language School (see Stein­berg
& James, 1971, for representative articles). Here we acquired the idea that
discourse and talk operate through ethnosemantic conventions the meaning of the
message is carried along with the un-verbalized support of presuppositions and
implications. Thus, the unit of language behavior must relate to the social
context of the situation. There exist operational rituals for transacting
topical exchanges, and these commonly held operations provide a motivational
direction to talk.

In
summary, then, we started with the word as the unit, and we moved beyond it, to
the transactional exchange. We would like to discuss some theoretical and
practical issues involving this new focus for psycholinguistics. The
accompanying table presents the focal issues in our own theoretical
development.

Shifting focus from the word to the exchange is accompanied
by the reali­zation that all discourse is interactional discourse, i. e.,
discourse is produced by more than one individual. This is of course most
obvious in the study of conver­sation where it appears that participants take
turns at talk: it is clear that the dis­course visible in a transcript is
interactionally produced. But this is equally true in both writing and in
interior dialog where there appears to be only one person producing the
discourse. However, it is a matter of common observation that writers change
their discourse in response to the intended or imagined audience, show­ing that
it too is a form of interactionally produced discourse, in self-talk (or
interior dialog), the person acts as if there is an audience: reports of
interior dialog produce transcript-like segments in which the person addresses
himself or herself using the pronouns [I, you, we] along with the appropriate
verb form, thus indicat­ing that the discourse produced in self-talk is also a
derivative form of interactio­nal discourse.

The analysis of interactional discourse hinges on the
recognition that discourse production is a spontaneous reactive phenomenon. By
analyzing the organiza­tional structure of interactional discourse one in
effect investigates the structure and operation of a social psychological
phenomenon. The laws of social interaction are uncovered through a close
analysis of the setting in which the discourse is a by­product. Discourse is
thus seen as a medium within which interactions are trans­acted. This
presupposes the notion that a discourse intervention by participant counts as a
move. The functional significance of discourse derives therefore from its
significance as a transactional move. Transactional moves are organized by pre­established
rituals of talk. These procedural operations are acquired as part of one’s
ordinary social competence on the daily round. We would like to explore so
theoretical issues that arise from this perspective.

IITheoretical
Issues

The primary theoretical issue that arises as one moves
beyond the word to the social exchange, is the explanation of connectedness at
two separate levels of operation. The idea of ‘having an exchange of words’
implies the minimal diadic arrangement, and we follow the ethnomethodologists
in the technique of dividing conversational exchanges into turns at talk, or
talking turns. The taling turn (TT) is one level of organization for
interactional discourse, i. e., discourse produced by more than one talker.

Another level of organization for the connectedness of
natural discourse is what we would call the “within turn” organization, i. e.,
the discourse produced by a single individual during his turn at talk. The
following diagram depicts this description and points to some implications.

CONNECTEDNESS
IN INTERACTIONAL

DISCOURSE
(== NATURAL TALK)

(DYNAMIC
LEVELS)

Between Turn PrinciplesWithin Turn Principles

I.Participant-oriented features1.Situated comment is minimal topic(=.Ethnomethodology).unit.2.Exchanges
are managed.2.A move raises a contention point.3.Episodes
are situated.3.Topicalization is the resolution ofcontention points.

4.Transactional
function given by exchanges slot, i.e., locus.

THEORETICAL
ISSUES

A.Sequencing
devices.

B.Boundary limits.

C.Transactional
moves.

D.Face-work.

E.Relationship
history (reputation; identity).

F.Community-Cataloguing Practices (CC’s).

A.Utterance units
are moves.

B.Topic has
transactional function.

C.Topic = labeled topical

elements.

We shall explore here only the theoretical implications of
between-turn con­nectedness and present the direction of our current work
dealing with the social psychology of language behavior or,
“sociopsycholinguistics.”

IIISome
Syntactic Properties of Conversational Interaction

A first practical issue to be resolved about the common
phenomenon of coaversation is represented by the question, “What’s going on in
the conversation?” We follow here the ethnomethodological dictum that the
answer to this question must exclude anything, which cannot be demonstrated to
be a feature to which participants are oriented. This stricture insures that
the theoretical explanation objectively matches the actual units that govern
the organization of verbal exchanges. By “actual units” we mean to designate
the features of the social exchange which conversationalists are oriented to
notice by virtue of their common socialization training. In other words, the
phenomenon of conversation is viewed as a managed exchange — managed by the
participants according to shared rituals of operation. The question then arises
as to how the interactional exchange is successfully man­aged by the
participants; more specifically, what mechanisms are there for regu­lating the
sequence of turns in a conversation? The mechanisms to be described must be
mechanism that are actually used, and these are perforce dependent on the
noticing of the participants when to talk, when to say what, when to ackno­wledge,
disagree, change topics, and so on.

To proceed with this task, then, we begin by defining the
minimal unit of exchange as a situated episode. An “episode” is a
sociopsychological concept. It derives from Goffman’s work on the nature of
ritual behavior on the “daily round.” All social behavior is situated in time
and place A “setting” is defined as a time/place specification for routine
activities in a community. For example, our students in social psychology are
given the exercise of recording, minute by mi­nute, the course of a day. Here
is a sample:

With this technique, which we call
logging activities, one can arrive at a local ethnography of community
settings. It is, in other words, a daily round map that empirically specifies
the available settings in a community. With such a map as a reference point,
episodes may now be investigated as a function of the setting within which the
exchange occurs. The following diagram depicts these relation­ships:

SITUATED
EPISODES

STRUCTURAL COMPONENTSFUNCTIONAL COM PONENTS

community
map of available settingsritual or routinized
operational

obtained through records of
loggingsequences called
“episodes” on the

activities (= time/place
specifications).daily round and localized on
the

community map of available
settings.

We shall present a transcript segment, prepared by a
student, and illustrate some techniques that are possible for investigating the
functional components of situated episodes (Winskowski, 1977).

Transcript segment: A and B are friends in their early twenties.
B is A’s boy­friend and has come to pick up A at her house. As the doorbell
rings, A opens the door, holding .a tape recorder in her hands.

The
accompanying table presents a first-order analysis of the structural and
functional components of this transcript segment.

STRUCTURAL COMPONENTS

BRACKETED SEGMENTS

TALKING
TURNS

SETTING LOCALE

front door exchange

walking into the kitchen

play talk sequence

in the kitchen

in the kitchen

in the kitchen

in the kitchen

FUNCTIONAL COMPONENTS

EPISODAL SEQUENCE

OF
OPERATION

greeting sequence

interrupted topic switch

greeting sequence

play talk intervention

greeting sequence

1-2

3-12

13

14-15

16

17-18

Note
that we’ve arranged the interactional discourse recorded on the tape in terms of
six parts which we call bracketed segments of the conversation. The first
segment comprises the structural units of talking turns 1 and 2, which occurred
atthe front door. This setting is
familiar to the participants: both share commonritual sequences known as “greeting” — a ritual that occurs when
two acquaintedparticipants suddenly
find themselves in face-to-face contact. In other words,TT’s (“taking turns”) 1 and 2 are
structurally localized (Episodal openers) andfunctionally standardized (greeting).

To demonstrate the functional
properties of this syntactic ‘slot’ one need onlyconsider alternative forms that might occur there without change
of function: e.g.,

AHiB:

a1: What’s up?

a2: Hi.

a3: Well, whatcha got here?

a4:I’ll
wait for you in the car.

a5: Hello, there, sweetheart.

etc.

The set of alternatives a is a form class
whose items distribute themselves over variable topical dimensions, but remain functionally
equivalent, being each a greeting response, thanks to their structural location
as Episodal openers.

This observation leads us to a
fundamental principle of interactional discourse production, namely, that
transactional function and topical content are independent.For example, TT (II), has a form class aa,
as follows:

II.Amusing, eh?12. B:

aa1:Uh, huh.

aa2:You think so?

aa3:Not really.
aa4:Fantastic

aa5:Yup.

etc.

The sum of
the sets of alternatives available in a talking turn, i.e.,

E
[a, aa, aaa … I]TT

may
be called the display repertoire of the verbalizing community. Through socia­lization,
training, and experience, a conversationalist acquires a certain portion of the
culturally available display repertoire. Individual variations exist in
available responses to a talking turn. Skilled conversationalists have
available a greater range of the verbalizing community’s display repertoire
than those who are less skilled. We may speak here of social or transactional
competence. One strategy in becoming a better ‘transactional engineer’ would
presumably be to (i) catalogue the set of alternatives available in particular
conversational slots, and (ii) learn them. Step (i) amounts to making a local
ethnography of social settings by some natural history technique (as in”
logging activities”, discussed above). Step (ii) amounts to becoming
acculturated, i. e. learning standardized patterns of topical interventions.
The lat­ter may be recognized as the perennial problem of the young, the
visitors, and the foreigners: “What shall I say, When, and How?l?” Assimilation
and re-educational training can be viewed as attempts to enlarge an
individual’s set of alternatives in interactional discourse — but enlarge in a
particular direction, namely, the direc­tion of greater overlap between the
individual’s current performances and the tar­get ‘norm’. This element is not
fixed, but operates within a ‘range of normalcy’ (Goffman’s term). Episodal exchanges
are progressive, i.e. they wind down from ‘openings’ to ‘closings’ (Sacks;
Shegloff). At any point within this sequence a par­ticipant may find himself
“at a loss for words.” This is a “normal” occurrence on the daily round. Yet
because episodes perforce wind down, there must be me­chanisms for re-starting
so that the closing exchange may ultimately occur. This mechanism also operates
when one is ‘at a loss for words’, at which time one re­starts, viz., begins a
new bracketed section of the conversation.

We can
summarize the above considerations by stating the following em­pirical
hypotheses about the character of conversational interaction:

Hypothesis 1: Verbalized utterances in a talking turn are
treated by participants as particularized surface variations of a form class
the items of which have the same transactional significance or function.

Hypothesis 2: The first pair of talking turns, i. e. the
first “adjacency pair” (Sacks’ term), in a conversational episode is treated by
participants as a greeting opener,

Hypothesis 3: The transactional or functional significance
of a talking turn is jointly recognized by participants in accordance with a,
transactional code which they share by virtue of their common membership in a
verbalizing community.We may state a
fourth hypothesis upon considering TT (2) in which partici­pant B says “What’s
up?” while gesturing towards the tape recorder held up by A upon opening the
front door.

Hypothesis 4: Any publicly noticeable change in the “normalcy”
status of the en­vironment (Goffman’s term), is a routinely available candidate
for being made the topic of an utterance in a talking turn.When we consider that the utterances in one
talking turn have a functional relation to utterances in adjacent turns (before
and after), we are led to a notion, discussed by Sacks and others, known as
“the setting-up-move.”

Hypothesis 5: There is a class of utterances, known as
general purpose inquiries, that when uttered in a talking turn, will be treated
by participants as serving to set-up the immediately next alternating talking
turn such that it will contain a move that will constitute a justificatory
comment on a readily noticeable environmental event.

Hypothesis 6: If a talking turn is made up of an utterance
of the class belonging to a general purpose inquiry, it will be seen by
participants to serve as a setting-up move for the utterance in the immediately
next alternating talking turn such that it, in turn, will be seen as a directed
response, a supportive move, a reply, a remedy.

The fifth
and sixth hypotheses are general formulations that have the merit of showing up
the common structural basis of a large class of conversational events that
relate to the sequential aspects of alternating talking turns. Next, when we
consider talking turns (3) — (12), we note that they constitute a bracketed
segment of the Episodal exchange. This leads us to the formulation of the next
hypothesis.

Hypothesis 7: There is a class of conversational events in
the form of an exchange of alternating talking turns that is bracketed from
other parts of the conver­sation, and where the bracketed exchange is seen by
participants as specifi­cally different from adjoining conversational material,
this difference being that it is to be seen as semi-serious or “play talk” in
contradistinction to the rest which is seen as serious.

The seven hypotheses outlined above imply the existence of
three types of functional mechanisms in conversational interaction. First, we
may mention the mechanism of sequencing devices. Given that talk proceeds
through time, the events that, take place in it must be ordered in some way,
and a description of these or­dering procedures is what’s called for in the
elaboration of conversational sequenc­ing devices. Second, we may mention the
mechanism of boundary limits in brack­eted sections of conversation. The
function of boundary limits is to indicate to participants where some event
begins and where it ends. We've reviewed some of the elements of boundary
limits, namely, talking turns, adjacency — pairs, opening sections, closing
sections, and play talk sections. Third, we may mention the mechanism of
transactional moves. The function of transactional moves is to indicate to
participants the significance of a conversational display (utterance or
gesture) for their relationship, i e. for their behavioral or interactional
implications.Thus, sequencing devices,
boundary limits, and transactional moves are theoretical me­chanisms that are
available to participants for ordering the sequence of talking turn utterances
within a conversational episode. The elaborations of these mechanisms in
Hypotheses I through 7, stated above, attempt to show that conversational dis­plays
(in gestures or in utterances) are treatable as transactional moves whose sig­nificance
derives from their structural properties, that is to say, their locus of oc­currence
in the conversation. By “locus” we mean such things as sequence of tal­king
turns, boundary limits of the bracketed section they belong to, place of that
section within the overall episode, and type of relationship of participants as
im­plied by previous history of joint conversational episodes.

We have
reached here a crucial stage in our theory building. Since the list of empirical
hypotheses (as proposed above) is potentially open-ended or inde­finitely
large, we need an explanatory mechanism that accounts for the occurrence of an
indefinitely large number of transactional sequences, as one observes regu­larly
in the continuing round of episodes on the daily schedule. In other words the
listing of empirical hypotheses about natural talk is a descriptive stage of
data processing (taxonomy?). We now need a process-valued function that sets
talking matters in motion, and directs movement towards an objectively
identifiable goal. We shall refer to this post-taxonomic phase as the
psychodynamics of talk.

Goffman’s
elaborated notions on “face work” serves as the starting point for our proposal
relating to the motivational dynamics of talk. The dialectic of offense and
remedy is posited as the generating mechanism. Utterances and ges­tures are
displays, or display presentations, or performances. Displays are organized as
moves in transactional sequences. Moves have direct ‘face work’ implications,
i. e. moves are indices to a person’s transactional reputation. Each utterance
or gesture displayed within a talking turn carries a transactional function.
The transactional value of a talking intervention is either positive or
negative. When positive, the move counts as a remedy; when negative, it counts
as an offense.

The
dialectic of remedy and offense provides us with the theoretical starting point
for evolving and explanatory account for the connectedness between talking turns
in a conversational episode. We have pointed out at the outset of this section
that the answer to, “What’s going on in this conversation?” must allow only ele­ments
which pertain to what the participants themselves orient to, as the episode
winds down to a closing. We need therefore a notation system for recording the
occurrences of noticing during talk. Let us call this type of record a
relationship history.

It is
intuitively valid that the transactants to an episode have a coding system for
keeping track of the episode’s evolution. Thus, topics that occur earlier are
pre-supposed in subsequent bracketed sections of the conversation. As well,
there is left an impression of the quality of the transactional face work —
whether pleasant, friendly, involving, or their opposites. And finally, there
is a sense of the episode’s context, in time, place, and schedule on the daily
round.

It is,
then, intuitively valid to presuppose, in natural talk, the existence of
methods participants use to keep track of the directionality and cumulative
value of each other’s face work. This cumulative record serves to reify the
mediating mechanisms of interactions, i. e. the reputation and Identity of
co-tranactants.

Relationship
history is the cumulative record of Episodal interactions be­tween two
individuals. Individuals use standard methods of keeping track. Gar­finkel
calls these methods “accounting practices” while we refer to them as “community
cataloguing practices” or “CCP’s” (see James & Gordon, 1975—77).

To recapitulate, we are proposing that the
directional syntax which generates the organizational sequencing of
transactional moves in social episodes, is the dia­lectic of offense and remedy
in face work. This motivational dynamic gives a goal-orientation to
conversational exchanges, and accounts for the natural winding down of all
episodes. Participants have standardized methods for keeping a cumu­lative
record of each other’s relationship history. These standardized methods for
keeping track reify reputation and identity. Now we are proposing to
investigate these cataloguing-practices that must form part of ordinary social
competence on the daily round. By generating such data we are preparing the
components needed for explaining the connectedness of utterances in
interactional discourse. The explanation of this connectedness will involve
explaining, (i) how participants keep track of what’s going on, i.e. the
features of the setting they orient to, notice, and code into a cumulative record;
(ii) how the cumulative record reifies the natural phenomena of reputation and
identity; and (iii) how reputation and identity pro­vide a mechanism for
relating moves to each other, i.e. for explaining the connec­tedness of
utterances in a conversation.

We can
only present here a brief account of our work thus far, but in any case, that
work is only initial, our interest here being, to offer some possible direc­tions
which we are finding fruitful (James & Gordon, 1978; 1979).

The Daily
Round Archives or “DRA” as our students refer to it, can be viewed as a local
ethnography of a community’s daily round cataloguing-practices. What gets kept
track of provides the investigator with the data needed to map the social
settings and indicate their ‘sociodynamics value’, i.e. their influencing
effects on the behavior of participants. The DRA files at the University of
Hawaii are prepared and catalogued by students who are trained in
psycholinguistic tech­niques applied to the natural history description of
community life. We have been using ethnosemantic sampling techniques for
building a cumulative catalog of social occasions on the daily round of our
students. A portion of the current taxo­nomy is shown in the accompanying
table:

2B9 People Who Are Non-Intimates and Non-Family Whose Ill
Health or Death Would Affect Me

2B10 People Whom I Might Ask for a Recommendation

2B11 People Who Influenced My Intellectual and Personal
Maturity

2B12 People I Don’t Know Personally But Whose Ideas Affect
Me

2B13
People Who Have or Could Ask Me for a Reference

2B14 People I See Regularly for Service or Supplies

2B15 People I’d Like Currently to Meet

2B16 People I Know Whose Words I Quote or Stories I Tell

2B17
People Whom I Believe to be Admired by My Parents

2B18 People Whom I Know Who I See or Think About Only Rarely

ZONE 3: ROLE

3A
LOGGING ACTIVITIES

3A1 Time

3A2
Duration

3A3 Place

3A4
Participants

3A5
Occasion

3A6 Nature
of Activity

3B
SITUATED INTERIOR DIALOGUE

3B1
Overlays of Comments to Self

3B2 Value
Expressions

3B3
Preparing Schedules

3B4
Reviewing/Making Plans and Lists

3B5
Emotionalizing Episodes

3B6
Rehearsals and Practicing’s

3B7
Annotations, Memorizing, Editing

3B8
Unmentionables Within the Relationship

3C
SITUATED STANDARDIZED IMAGININGS

3D
SITUATED PSYCHOLOGIZINGS

3E
SITUATED SENSATIONS AND FEELINGS

3E1. Micro
descriptions of Sensory Observations

3E1.1 Aches and Pains

3E1.2
Stretchings and Exercise

3E1.3
Blushing

3E1.4
Retinal Sensations, etc.

3E1.5 Appetite
and Cooking

3E1.6 Energy Level

3E1.7 Smells and Odors

3F
SITUATED FEELING ARGUMENTS

3F1
Figuring Out a Conflict

3F2 Making
Resolutions

3G
SITUATED FANTASY/DAYDREAM EPISODES

3G1
Elaboration of Dramatized Scenarios

3G2
Construction of Catharsis Stories

3G3
Re-contacting Nostalgic Memories

3G4
Working out Alternative Realities

3H THE
ELEVATED REGISTER

3H1
Praying/Invocations

3H2
Altered States of Consciousness

3H3
Meditations/Reading of Scriptures

3114
Poetic Expressions

31 RESPONSIBILITIES
AND DUTIES

3J SOCIAL
MEMBERSHIPS

ZONE
4:PSYCHOHISTORY4A SITUATED ATTRIBUTIONS

4B
SITUATED ASSESSMENTS/EVALUATIONS

4C
SITUATED JUDGMENTS

4D
INTERVIEWING SELF

4D1 Who Am
I

4D2 What
Am I

4D3 How Am
I

4D4 What
Do I Look to You

ZONE 5:
TERRITORIALITY

5A
REGULAR LISTS AND BELONGINGS

5A1 Invitations

5A2
Announcements

5A3
Subscriptions

5A3.1
Periodicals

5A3.2
Membership Dues

5A3.3
Contributions

5A4
Bills

5A5
Closets

5A6
Drawers

5A7
Objects

5A8
Documents and Mementos

5A8.1
Official/Legal/Medical

5A8.2
Personal/Biographical

5A8.2.1
Prizes

5A8.2.2
Letters

5A8.2.3
Gifts

5A8.2.4
Albums

5A8.2.5
Souvenirs

5A9
Personal Effects: Selected Inventories

5A9.1
Purse/Wallet

5A9.2
Car Glove Compartment

5A9.3
Your Own Drawer for Stuff

5A9.4
Clothes Closet

5B ROUTINE
CONCERNS: SELECTED INVENTORIES

5B1
Privacy

5B1.1 From
the EYES of Particular Others

5B1.2 From
the NOSE of Particular Others

5B1.3 From
the EARS of Particular Others

5B1.4 From
the KNOWLEDGE of Particular Others

5B1.4.1 Involving
Your Activities

5B1.4.1.1
Places

5B1.4.1.2
People

5B1.4.1.3
Purchases

5B1.4.1.4
Bills

5B1.4.2
Involving Your Ideas

5B1.4.2.1
Memories

5B1.4.2.2
Attitudes

5B1.4.2.3
Opinions

5B2
Information: Record Keeping

5B2.1
Schedules

5B2.2
Shopping Lists

5B2.3 Date
and Address Books

5B2.4
Check/Bank Books

5B2.5
Biographical

5B2.5.1
Diary

5B2.5.2
Notes

5B2.5.3
Resolutions

5C
NOTICING OBSERVATIONS

5CI Visual
Sightings

5C1.1
Physical State/Appearance of Things and Places

5C1.2
Change in Normalcy Signs

5C1.3 Weather

5C1.4 People in Public Places

5C2
Relationship Events

5C2.1
Noticeables About People You Know

5C2.1.1
Physical Appearance

5C2.1.2.
Mood

5C2. 1.3
Unmentionables Within the Relationship

5C2. 1.4
Disoccasioned Mentionables

5C3
Auditory Pickings-up

5C3. 1
Overheard Snatches of Talk

5C3.2
Sounds, Noises

5D
DESCRIPTION OF TRANSACTIONS

5D1
Gossiping

5D2 Catching Up on News

5D3 Having
an Argument

5D4 Joking

5D5
Exchanging Information

5D6 Making
Arrangements

5D7
Working Out a Problem

5D8 Sharing
Secrets/Confessions

5D9
Routine Reviews/News of the Day

5E
TRANSACTIONAL STRATEGIES: EPISODES WHEN I:

5E1 Lied

5E2
Avoided

5E3
Persisted In

5E4
Pursued

5E5
Insisted On

5F
DECLARATIONS

5F1
Problems

5F2
Concerns

5F3
Secrets

5F4 Disoccasioned
Topics

5F5
Superstitions

5G SLOGANS

5G1 About
Appearance

5G2 About
Health

5G3 About
Diet

5G4 Folk
Wisdom

5H
EPITHETS

5H1 Pet
Peeves (self and others)

5H2 Family
Sayings

5H3
Nicknames (self and others)

5H4
Personal (self and others)

5H5 Regularized
References to:

5H5.1
Time

5H5.2
Place

5H5.3
Events

51
HANGOUTS AND GROUP ACTIVITIES

511Places512Circumstances of Crowding With513Activities with Others514Rights and Privileges515Reputation

5J
REPORTING JOINT ACTIVITIES

5J1 Doing
Something With Dates, Appointments

5J2
Telephone Calls

5J3
Writing/Receiving Notes, Letters, Memos, Ads, etc.

5J4 Raying
Bills

5K
NON-JOINT ACTIVITIES

5K1 Doing
a Task for Another Person

5K2 Buying
a Gift for Another Person

5K3 Mentioning
a Person to Someone

5K4
Avoiding a Person

5K5 Going
to See/Looking for a Person

5K6 Having
a Mental Exchange with Someone

ZONE 6:
APPEARANCE

6A
INTERVIEWING OTHERS

6A1 Who Am
I

6A2 What
Am I

6A3 How Am
I

6A4 What
Do I Look Like To You

The DRA Index is a cumulative record of the cataloguing-practices
of the community, as witnessed by the contributors to the daily round data
bank. This catalogue serves to identify the ordinary noticing of participants
engaged in so­cial episodes, whether monadic (by oneself), or diadic, or
public. Contributors use a specified format of reporting which we provide and
which evolves as we under­stand more about what’s to be done! We find one
particular technique useful, what we call annotations. Contributors make
reports, which involve the form of tran­scripts, microdescriptions, and
interior dialog or discourse thinking (inner argu­ments and comments made to
the self). These form the raw data. Next, the raw data are processed two ways
through ‘witnessings’: first, the contributor annotates the raw data; second,
“readers” annotate them as well, and in some cases, annota­tions are annotated
by subsequent readers. This generational processing of the data bank creates a
cumulative catalogue of what social stimuli are noticed and are being kept
track of in a community. Assuming progress in a successive approximation
towards the solution of the cataloguing issue (above), the next phase of this
theo­retical program is to ascertain the transactional value of the noticings
on the daily round that participants keep track of. We do this by obtaining
particular kinds of annotations of the recorded noticings by both the
participant-contributor to the DRA and as well, by readers or users of the DRA.
These ‘readers’ are successive generations of students so that the data in the
DRA gets processed cumulatively in the form of annotations on annotations.

FOOTNOTES

1.This article is based on our Lecture
Notes for “Applied Psycholinguistics in Social Psychology” (now Psychology
“397”, University of Hawaii), written in 1972. A mimeographed version of the
lecture notes appears in Vol. 1 “The Func­tional Analysis of the Verbal
Community” in Series 3 of James and Gordon, 1975—77, see References.

2.Leon James is Professor of Psychology
at the University of Hawaii. In 1966, as Co-director of the Center for
Comparative Psycholinguistics, University of Illinois, he visited the Institute
during which he had the good fortune of meeting Prof. Kostic, and would like to
take this opportunity of expressing both honor and pleasure, at “unveiling”
these newer ideas on psycholinguistics, for the first time in this volume,
published in honor of Prof. Kostic, who has, over the years, shown a keen
interest in this specialization of the language sciences, and in that interest,
has supported its development (James, 1966).

3.Barbara Gordon is Visiting Colleague
in Psycholinguistics at the Univer­sity of Hawaii and is President,
Transactional Engineering Corporation, Florida and Hawaii. Since 1950, she’s
been active in Educational Linguistics, a branch of the language sciences that
concerns itself with the applied uses of linguistic know­ledge in school
settings, as in training teachers, in ameliorating academic literacy, in
expanding cognitive development, and so on (see Gordon, 1962; Aarons, Gordon,
Stewart, 1969; James and Gordon, 1974).

4.DRA table footnote. The
classification scheme shown here is based on our, as yet unpublished work
(James and Gordon, 1975—77), on what we label "ethnosemantics.” The basis
of this method of analysis of cultural phenomena of meaning and function (=
“situational pragmatics”) is our discovery of a natural hexagrammatic order,
differentiated along developmental stages. The six zones and their derivative
sub-zones in the DRA classification scheme, follow this hexa­grammatic
hierarchy. For further details, see in addition James and Gordon, (1969; 1968).
1. Mayer (1935) was among the first to our knowledge to foresee the use of
evidential procedures in social psychology, as exemplified in the natural
history methodology of the DRA project.